A few days ago a friend brushed and fa'ed some new problems including a 45° OW. Knowing me as one of the few climbers in the forest who could actually get excited at it, he tagged me on a pic of the problem he published on his fb account.

I immediatly asked where the thing was, and went for a repeat. After repeating i cheered the first ascensionist, who then asked : "is the grade correct?" I answered that i couln't really know before a US trip.

additional info: where i'm reaching far inside the crack, there's two bomber handjams (that i hang from to briefly invert). Hitting the first one just right is not obvious though, as it'a quite a big move! The short layback at the end is the most strenous part. The fine-grained sandstone is quite grippy and those having visited both places say HP40 is the closest match on american ground.

so, i encourage you to express your grade guesses! Won't tell you the first ascensionist grade not to influence you :)

Its impossible to say since you layback through what would be the most difficult part to crack climb. Which is to say, whatever you felt like it was compared to other Font problems, that's probably accurate for the style you climbed it, which is not at all comparable to an actual offwidth roof.

Keep your legs in the crack, rotate into a knee-lock at the lip, do the situp and stack through that shit, then we can make a guess about the grade.

Keep your legs in the crack, rotate into a knee-lock at the lip, do the situp and stack through that shit, then we can make a guess about the grade.

i tried to figure out something like this for about 30 mins, but couldn't get past the stage where i had both feet in (a mix of being a total punter at it, the crack being slimier the deeper you got in it, and fear of falling head first)

at least i did better than the FA, who didn't even see the handjams and grabbed a shitty slopey crimper instead...